The courage to love.
“What do you do for work?”
“I’m a palliative care doctor.”
“Oh… That’s so sad”.
This is often the initial reaction that people have when they hear that I work in “palliative care”. What is hard for me to describe in the moment, is yes of course there is sadness and grief, but it is so much more than that.
On a podcast episode where Steven Bartlett interviews Brené Brown, a shame and vulnerability researcher at The University of Houston, she reminds us once again what vulnerability is:
“without vulnerability, you cannot access love.
And love, it’s to risk grief and losing.”
That, in essence, describes the complexity of, yes, there is sadness working in palliative care, but there is also so much love.
The depth of grief is often proportional to the amount of love that is there.
What I didn’t realize until hearing Brené Brown vocalize that “love is to risk grief and losing”, and this is the ultimate form of vulnerability is that I see on a daily basis at work. The type of vulnerability that admittedly, I’m terrified by.
I feel incredibly lucky that when I go to work, I am able to bear witness and learn from the wisdom and life experiences of patients and their love ones. Hearing Brené Brown frame vulnerability and in turn, courage this way, I realized this is one of the key lessons I see everyday at work; the courage for people to time and time again dare to love, despite the undeniable end that is coming for us all – death.
The courage to love that exists so clearly in all types of relationship, in partnerships - whether it’s a 40 year old marriage, second marriages as widows, or a new relationship that blossomed in a care facility. Relationships between parents and children (adopted, blended family or biological), lifelong friendships that weathered different seasons in one’s life, the bond between owner and their loyal pets, or community within their congregation.
I am reminded of the courage that despite the risk and chance of losing someone you love;
an elderly parent who you’ve had many memories to look back on,
a partner who you just had a few years with and thought there would be decades more,
the impending grief of having to bury your adult child,
people are continuing to take the risk time and time again. That is what we do as humans. This is the type of courage I see as part of our shared humanity everyday at work. We love even though we know one day there will be inevitable grief and loss.
